The video and story below chronicle a recent Sunday afternoon in Venice, California, when 22 children, ages 5-12, gathered to sing original songs in the belief that their singing would lift up our communities and the Obama campaign for the coming election. This was a grassroots deal from the start, but thanks to unexpected assistance from parents and then top film production folks in LA, the performances are captured for all time.
The video was just finished and uploaded to YouTube earlier this evening, and as one of the video’s two grips-for-the-day, I’m especially proud to present it to Daily Kos first:
Just a quick thought, based on what's now old news but McCain did bring it up again Saturday - the idea that he "knows how to win wars".
Here's what I'd ask McCain if he ever held a town hall on Long Island (HAH!) and I managed to get hold of the mike:
Sen. McCain, you graduated in the bottom 1 percentile of your class at Annapolis. In training, you crashed 3 planes. You never held a command position in the Navy, and your only combat experience was in a war we lost. How do you know how to win wars, and what's the secret?
In followup, I'd also like ask if he'd shared with the current President his ideas on how to catch Bin Laden, and (A) if not, why not, (B) why he was unable to persuade Bush to execute his masterplan, or (C) why the plan failed.
Here's another "This Date in History" "gem"; on this date in 1909, the first auto race was held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Ever since then, my "beloved" state has been known for corn & racing. That's a hell of a legacy, ain't it?!
If you're like me these days, you could use a laugh (or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or infinity). On NPR today, Terri Gross replayed an interview she did with Mort Sahl in 2003; I laughed long, and I laughed hard (yea...yea...yea...get your minds out of the gutter; there's only room for me). Her shows are available as PodCasts, so if you have the means & the access to a nearby intertubes machine, I highly recommend you download it.
The south is known as a Republican stronghold in the last few years after long Democratic traditions, and Democrats are once again standing up to fight for the South. NC and VA are springing up to be swing-states, and Democrats are fighting all over the South for House and Senate seats.
Welcome back for more speculation! Today continues the new final series of possibilities for Obama's v.p.
This series began with a new top 14 list of names I considered most likely to be named Obama's v.p. running mate, and we'll eliminate the bottom vote-getter each day until there is a winner, or a real-life winner is named by Obama. Starting today, candidates will be listed in order of votes from the previous poll, from most to least, so we'll have some idea of preference in this thread's voting should Obama decide before there is a series winner. Sens. Evan Bayh (IN) and Jack Reed (RI) were eliminated in the previous round.
Please discuss any v.p. candidates in the comments. The most correct format would be to state their name, unless you have further comments. I'm happy to hear all ideas in this open thread, and I'm no official gatekeeper, so play nice.
Only fools will believe Barrack Obama has no respect for life. What about John McCain killing innocent women and children from 15,000 feet in Vietnam? How many innocent people is he responsible for killing? McCain is a murderer and war criminal.
The justification for Public Law 93-531 passed by Congress in 1974 was that the Navajo-Hopi land dispute is so serious that 10,000 Navajos near Big Mountain, Arizona, must be relocated, forcibly if necessary. It would be the largest forced relocation of U.S. citizens since the relocation of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
But tradition-minded Navajo and Hopi claim there never was a land dispute. They say the dispute was invented to get the Navajos and their livestock off mineral-rich land in the Hopi reservation so it could be developed by mining companies such as Peabody Coal and Kerr-McGee.
John McNicotine is now for the tobacco lobby after years of working against it. He not only opposes the cigarette taxes he used to support but also opposes FDA regulation of the tobacco industry after years of supporting it. McNicotine is an ex-smoker and should understand just how addictive nicotine is, and he even acknowledged the exceptionally high death rate for tobacco users when he joked that cigarette exports to Iran were part of his plot to kill Iranian citizens. For McNicotine to cave in to the tobacco cartel is the ultimate flip-flop:
http://www.boston.com/...
Why has McNicotine caved in to the interests of the tobacco drug cartel? It couldn't possibly have anything to do with hiring tobacco lobbyist Charlie Black as his senior adviser. Move along folks. There's nothing to see here:
http://firedoglake.com/...
Now let's use the traditional Rethug "moral values" and "sanctity of life" frames against McNicotine! There's more in the flip.
If you had told me a month ago - hell, probably a day ago - that I would suggest what I am about to suggest, I would have told you that you were crazy, but here it is anyway:
I think Hillary Clinton would be a solid running mate.
I can hear the complaints already. Hillary is the DLC wing, she is everything we've worked to defeat, she is the personification of the middle-of-the-road bumbling that helped bury this party for 40 years, she goes against the Change theme, etc., etc.
Yes - I'm calling out Pastor Rick Warren. Because last night, on Larry King Live, Warren dismissed as "bogus" concerns about McCain having prior knowledge of specific questions. He asserted that there's no chance that McCain could have gotten questions during his drive to the forum because "the Secret Service would have reported it". Why are Warren and many in the media assiduously ignoring very clear evidence that John McCain knew at least one of the questions ahead of time? Do they expect us to believe them or should we believe our lying eyes?
Leo Tolstoy famously wrote that “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” I have sometimes wondered whether Tolstoy had that quite right, and so, by way of explanation, I submit to you (and to Leo) Mr. and Mrs. McCain.
So where did Andrea Mitchell get the cojones to say on Meet the Press that "cone of silence" may not have been so silent?
Her statement was;
The Obama people must feel that he didn't do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context, because that -- what they're putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama.
John McCain and Barack Obama testified before a large audience of Southern Baptists at the Saddleback Church in Orange County, California. They also used up a large chunk of prime time television.
It's not the debate that irks me a little; it's the idea that somebody's religious views are pertinent to the kind of leadership the country needs to get over the unholy mess created by our born-again President.
How about settling first on what's important in making a person "religious?" In the same way wearing a flag pin doesn't make someone patriotic, believing abortion is a sin doesn't make somebody Christian. After all, the views of fundamental Muslims and fundamental Christians regarding drinking are identical, as are the prohibitions on pork by Muslims and Jews.
I propose leaving religious debates to religious leaders and their followers and allowing the TV producers and their anchors to concentrate on the truly important rapes, murders and sporting events by which they uplift and enlighten our lives.
While everyone in the Netroots and the Mainstream Media obsessed on Barack Obama's performance at the Saddleback Faith Fakery, everyone continues to ignore the fact that the Christian Evangelical base of the Republican Party is cracking and showing intense disinterest in Grandpa McSame.
A disinterest so intense that even reliable mouthpieces of the Religious Right like the American Family Association's propaganda orifice, OneNewsNow, remarks on the McCain malaise in a piece headlined, "Evangelical Vote Flounders".
All of the turmoil about "Questiongate" has centered around McDick having an audio feed or something in his green room, or how he was leaving the Sizzler Buffet (senior night, woot woot!) in his motorcade. Guess what? Cell phones/Blackberries work in motorcades and green rooms!
Why didn't he just say "No, we didn't hear anything?"
When asked if McCain overheard anything, Charlie Black, a McCain adviser who was with him at the time, told CNN: "We were in motorcade until 5:30 p.m. ET; then a holding room in another building with no TV."
Has the McCain camp denied getting information, or are they still sticking with the bizarro-world assertion that information cannot penetrate a secret service motorcade?
